Integrating IAEA’s Physical Model with JRC’s The Big Table document search tool

The Physical Model (PM) is an internal multi-Volume document for the IAEA’s Department of Safeguards describing the nuclear fuel cycle. This report describes work carried out by the JRC with the IAEA to prototype the integration of the PM with The Big Table (TBT), a document search tool developed by the JRC and in use at the IAEA. The core of TBT is an integrated collection of reference documents including regulatory documents, technical handbooks and trade nomenclatures. The documents are stored in a database. They are searchable by text in a structured way (i.e. on database fields) and also by correspondence tables that relate items by their meaning. To integrate the Physical Model into TBT, the IAEA/SG/SGIM has first turned the PM into a tabular format. JRC has then proposed and implemented a way of coding the PM in TBT tables to better reflect the PM structure. Eleven PM Volumes have been integrated in a TBT-PM database for use by the IAEA. The PM Volumes are linked by correspondence tables to other documents in the TBT collection. By coding the Physical Model into a TBT database format, the original intended uses of the PM are still supported. TBT can ease the consultation of the PM for evaluating States’ nuclear activities by IAEA’s analysts. TBT can be an aid for IAEA’s inspectors preparing for routine and ad hoc inspections, design information verification visits and complementary access operations. Further the PM integrated into TBT can be used as a tool for training inspectors on steps of the nuclear fuel cycle. Finally implementing the Physical Model multi-level structure into a database-coded format opens the possibility of linking the PM to other taxonomies and collections of open sources relevant for safeguards analyses.JRC.E.8-Nuclear securit